Bolzano day 1 & 2

Day 1

Early mornings in airports are worrying places â?? this impression is enhanced by the people in the bar swigging alcohol before 7 am. Otherwise traveling is fun. Most enjoyable was the train between Verona and Bolzano. It is a 2 hour trip up a valley between high mountains. Every open place seems to be guarded by a fort-like building and every second impregnable hill seems to have a church on top.

Bolzano seems to be a nice northern Italian (oops sorry South Tyrolean) city. A clean, well organised city based upon a medieval model. The main irritation was that I forgot to bring an Italian power adapter but we passed an electrician on the way to the conference â?? problem solved.

Once at the conference it was lots of old and new people to talk to. Its great. Only drawback now is patchy wireless and that the dinner is three hours away…

Day 2

Yesterdays dinner was held on the top of a mountain unfortunately it was dark so there was no view. Dinner was nice – lots of people to talk to. Eventually the bus took us back to the hotel.

Today begins with a workshop on the fellowship smart card (which is used to handle the GPG encryption keys) by Werner Koch.

Knuth versus Email

For some time now Donald Knuth is no longer doing email. But did you read his reason? He has a great online explanation where he writes:

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don’t have time for such study.

On the same page he also quotes Umberto Eco “I don’t even have an e-mail address. I have reached an age where my main purpose is not to receive messages.”

Knuth wrote this almost 17 years ago. It’s still right. It is very impressive. I am particularly impressed today since I spent a great deal of time yesterday cleaning out my inbox dealing with over 200 little tasks which had piled up there.
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PS. For those of you who do not know who Knuth is: Before you even start to think about attempting to call Knuth anti-technology or using complex words like Luddite make sure you read up, why not try wikipedia?

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Populism Tomorrow

Tomorrow I shall be trying something new. My university has a popular science event where researchers present an interesting aspect of their research to the public in 15 minutes at a local bookstore.

So tomorrow I shall be presenting the Swedish file sharing situation. This will include (1) what file sharing is (2) why it annoys people (3) the police raid on The Pirate Bay this summer, and (4) recent court cases.

All in 15 minutes with no props!

So if you are not busy during your lunch hour why not drop by Wettergrens bookstore on Västra hamngatan in Göteborg at 12.30.

The title of the talk is â??File-sharing: the battle between pirates and policeâ?? â?? what can I say? I have a broad populist streak.

Toaster Filling

As mentioned earlier we are going to build a Freedom Toaster for the Technical Museum in Stockholm. Naturally itâ??s on a short deadline â?? life would be boring otherwise!

As part of the Toaster we also want to include more stuff than simply an operating system. We want to have texts, images, music and film. We also want the material to be Creative Commons licensed (or similar) so that people can do more than simply be passive consumers (if they choose to be more).

In an instance of synchronicity – today I aimlessly browsed into the blog of an excellent artist & cartoonist and was blown away (who says procrastination is all bad?). Not only this but he happens to live in Göteborg (same city as me).

Naturally I emailed him about the project and he is interested in helping to provide some of his artwork for the project. What can I say? Sometimes Fortuna plays along. Check out the artwork on Mattias Adolssonâ??s blog.

This is his Beatnick Dragon

How about that Ubuntu?

Most people move in tight social circles with shared norms and languages. For my part it’s techtalk, legalese  or academiaspeak . Every now and then, when I escape from my normal habitat, I am reminded that this is not the standard language in all circles. Sometimes amusing or confusing events occur.

xkcd has captured a moment like this…

Greenpeace Thrown Out of Mac Expo

Greenpeace rented a space at the London Mac Expo as part of their ongoing â??Green My Appleâ??. The campaign is an awareness campaign to attempt to get technology manufacturers (Apple in particular) to begin seriously considering their environmental impact.

Apparently Greenpeace was thrown out of the Expo for handing out leaflets outside the space they had rented. Naturally they were only thrown out after other exhibitors complained.

Considering Apples image it must really hurt when they have to fight against an organisation like Greenpeace.

(via DailyTech & The Register)

Update:

More claims are appearing that state that Greenpeace intentionally provoked the action:

There then followed a number of complaints about the behaviour of Greenpeace activists from four visitors and five exhibitors, one of which was Apple. Allegedly, Greenpeace attendees were invading other stands for mock photo shoots and replacing other exhibitorsâ?? promotional material with their own.The problem came to a head when one woman complained that they had placed an apple in her childâ??s pram and were taking photographs of him without her permission.

Bob Denton told Macworld: â??I explained to them that I had the right to eject them but that wouldnâ??t happen if they showed reason.â?? However, later in the day, â??two more visitors and two more exhibitors complainedâ?? and he ejected the activists under clause 13 of the terms and conditions that Greenpeace signed.

â??They were determined to create conflict,â?? said Bob Denton (via Macworld)

Expression, not Repression

Amnesty is one of those organisations which you know you should support more than you already do. They have also moved into the digital domain and are supporting all kinds of online expression. In an attempt to prevent online censorship they launched their irrepressible campaign.

Part of irrepressible is a technical solution that breaks censored texts into small pieces and maintains them online. Read more about how to help here.

If you cannot do more then at least sign their petition:

I believe the Internet should be a force for political freedom, not repression. People have the right to seek and receive information and to express their peaceful beliefs online without fear or interference.

I call on governments to stop the unwarranted restriction of freedom of expression on the Internet â?? and on companies to stop helping them do it.

Amnesty International will also be present at the Internet Governance Forum in Athens next week. Again they will be â??â?¦stressing the importance of protecting free expression and privacy onlineâ??

Read their press release here.

Tagging DRM

The Anti-DRM campaign Defective By Design has begun tagging products on Amazon.

The system works on Amazon.com with their system of “tagging” products on its US site. You can look at a product and add a tag that describes it. We have started tagging items that contain DRM (Blu-Ray players, Blu-Ray DVDs, the Zune, the iPod, Amazon Unbox movies etc.) with the “defectivebydesignâ?? tag.

As products get tagged over and over again with a particular tag, that tag surfaces to the top of the list, and displays in larger text in some views. There is also a page for pictures and discussions of the tag. Tag these products and search for similar DRM products to tag now!

All of the international Amazon websites allow customers to review products. Review a DRM product NOW as a way to warn others of the problems they may face because of DRM. Once you have reviewed a product you can post the link as a comment on our site, to encourage other DefectiveByDesign crew members to rate your review. If you see a product review that points out the DRM problems you can also rate that review highly so that others will see it.

Your participation will ensure that thousands of products get tagged and reviewed, and hundreds of thousands of consumers, maybe millions, will be warned about DRM. Nice!

(via Defective by Design)

Cool Job

Looking for a really cool job? How about working for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in Brussels…

EFF Seeks European Affairs Co-ordinator

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is looking for a European
staffer to head up our new Brussels office and round out our
international team. This is a new position focused on European
Community level intellectual property and civil liberties policy
initiatives that impact the digital environment. The position will be
part policy analyst, part activist and part educator.

We are looking for a motivated and dynamic European with:

– excellent written and spoken English language skills, and fluency
in another relevant language (preferably French or German or another
major European language);
– well-developed public speaking and social skills, who can talk with
a wide range of audiences including European MEPs and Commission
staff, consumer rights and public interest groups, computer
programmers and media;
-familiarity with current European Community IP and civil liberties
legislative and policy developments;
– a solid understanding of the European Community’s structure, main
fora, decision-making processes and key personnel and committees that
work in the IP and civil liberties arenas;
– strong policy analysis skills;
– a good strategic sense;
– maturity of judgment;
– demonstrated ability to meet deadlines and work with others
remotely; and
– the ability to travel throughout Europe, and to the United States.

EFF is passionate about our mission, and our ideal candidate will be
too. We work on cutting-edge issues in a fun, fast-paced team
environment. Salary and details of benefits package available on
request.

Applicants: please send a cover letter and resume in TXT, RTF, ODT,
DOC, PDF or html format to eurocoordinator@eff.org

Deadline for applications: Rolling, but not later than December 1, 2006.

No, I am not planning to apply. But it would be a really cool challenge…

Good News

Today has been a good day. Two pieces of very good news dropped in. The first is that the Technical Museum in Stockholm has asked us (Jonas Ã?berg, Henrik Sandklef & I) to build a Freedom Toaster for an exhibition.

The second piece of good news is that we have received approval from the Dean of our faculty that we can form a Centre for Free Software. This means that FSF Europe will have a stronger base in Sweden and that we will be able to lay the foundations for a long-term research agenda in Free Software.

Obviously there is a lot more to say about this latter point but that will have to come at a later stage when we have begun to formalise what we want to do and what we are able to do. The founding people at the centre are Jonas Ã?berg, Henrik Sandklef, Lennart Petersson, Alan Carlsson and myself.